(Former Labor MP and ABC presenter) Maxine McKew writes that Ms Gillard met Mr Rudd at Kirribilli House in early January 2010.

“Gillard had a blunt message for her Prime Minister,” she writes. “She told Rudd that under no circumstances would she support the case for an election based on the need for action on climate change.

She didn’t want to offer an ETS, and later declared in the campaign “there will be no Carbon Tax”, but after the election she gave us both. Her poor supporters have been left to weasel and whine post hoc that the public voted for carbon action in 2007. Apologists dissembled on whether the carbon tax is a “tax” or a “fixed priced scheme for an ETS” pretending that a lie was not a lie, that Gillard was doing what the people wanted and not breaking her word. It all comes to nothing.

Gillard cares for working families by giving them what they asked not to get and deceiving them about what a vote for Gillard means. This is “moving forward” right? Forward to where — a third-rate autocratic state?

In 2010 eighty percent of Australians voted for parties promising no carbon tax. It’s not just that Gillard felt that an ETS was unpopular with the people, she didn’t even think it was worth trying to convince the people it ought to be popular.

How could Gillard run for another election? There is no promise she could make that anyone can believe.